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Alchemist
Original Poster
#1 Old 17th Apr 2018 at 1:06 PM
Default Experiences in owning a store/bakery?
My fingers are itching a bit for having my sim open up their own business, either with the Store items of a regular store or the bakery. I understand sims will not usually come to the business unless it is a community lot. Does anyone have any experiences with it? What should I know before my sim takes the step?

(Also, does anyone have any experience with using the bistro Store item on like a resort lot or a night club?)
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Instructor
#2 Old 17th Apr 2018 at 6:21 PM
I don't have any experience w/the Bistro, but I tried the Indulgent bakery once and it was a nightmare! I should try the Bistro sometime.
Instructor
#3 Old 18th Apr 2018 at 8:05 AM
I've had a bakery (EA Store) not long ago (owned by my active sim), in my opinion it's more for roleplay than strategy. I mean, you won't earn significant income by that, its value is in the story /character development, if any.
- The biggest disadvantage for me was that my active household had to bake the products all day long to satisfy the customer demand. All of the cookies and bread was sold all right in a few hours from the displays, but I had to give up any other activities in order to fill the displays the next day with fresh stuff. Lots of work for tiny money. If you decide that "to hell with it, I have a day off and go to the Park", than the next day or two the displays would remain empty, while the visitors would be gazing and drooling at them in vain.
- The Register: it's easier than one thinks because you don't have to tend the Register. You don't even have to go to your bakery to sell the goods. They are purchased autonomously by the lot visitors. You just fill the glass displays and can stay at home to bake... because...
- ...and that's also a weird part, you can't drag and drop your cakes into the displays when you are on the bakery community lot. I mean, you can use the bakery oven to bake cookies on the community lot (also your visitors use it autonomously), but you can only serve and eat them there, you can't "drag it" by hand to place it for sale. So generally I baked at home everything, dragged them into my inventory, then zoomed into the bakery from map view and filled the displays from my inventory. It's easy but weird.
- what was also a bit weird to me, that the lot visitors (customers) were attracted not only to the displays (to buy the goods) but to the Register as well - sometimes they autonomously tended the Register a bit. That's also a sign I think that the Register is not for the owner of lot, it's just... general. for the feeling.
Maybe it's more pleasant if you have a household with at least two unemployed adults, and one of them is in the bakery to roleplay that they sell the products, and the other stays at home and bakes the bread all day and night until faints.

All the above experiences are without any "business mods" (but I have awesomemod and few NRaas mods).
Mad Poster
#4 Old 18th Apr 2018 at 8:28 AM Last edited by igazor : 18th Apr 2018 at 6:19 PM.
The money to be made in owning a Bakery comes from the real estate investment if you stay with it long enough. It doesn't matter how many cupcakes or pies one sells or throws away at the end of the day, that's never enough one way or the other to make any difference. At least, this is the lesson I've learned from trying to run one. As a hobby and for farmers to use up some of their fresh grown produce and harvested eggs, one only open on weekends isn't as bad as trying to grind anything meaningful out of daily operations.
Instructor
#6 Old 19th Apr 2018 at 9:56 PM
There's a mod for the bakery at NRaas that might be helpful. I've never tried it but I remember reading about it: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Cupcake
Mad Poster
#7 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 12:00 AM Last edited by igazor : 20th Apr 2018 at 12:27 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by orose
There's a mod for the bakery at NRaas that might be helpful. I've never tried it but I remember reading about it: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Cupcake

Well yes, but that's cheating...I'm telling.

Cupcake is a great mod, but at the time I was trying to run a bakery without any auto-restock features to preserve the illusion that high quality homegrown ingredients and hard work went into those medium to high quality baked goods. Nobody except me really cared. And when a married couple who were my only customers one day decided to do animated woohoo on top of a plate of freshly baked cinnamon rolls that were set out and meant to be free samples, that's around where I raised the white flag of surrender. Not that animated woohoo has anything to do with bakeries directly, and yes I know that sims react differently to the aroma of cinnamon than (I think) most of us do, but clearly the game was trying to tell me something and it just took a while for me to get the message.

For playing the customer rather than the owners though, the Cupcake mod can't be beat. I've got "bakeries" all over town with overpriced outstanding and higher quality sandwiches, desserts, pizzas, snacks, all day breakfasts, etc. The mod also allows inactives to shop for food out of hunger, rather than just to relieve fun, and the inactive sims actually get to keep what they purchase and eat single servings as they wish. I see it as a tremendously great solution...but to a different problem.
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